for people who care about the West

Like it or not, corn is in every meal

For the first time in
history, the youngest generation alive today is at risk of a
shorter lifespan than their parents. As we begin the 21st century,
we have managed to take a great leap backward: We’re living
shorter lives.

We know why. It’s because of our
poor diets, our alarming proclivity for fast food, and the
increasing epidemic of obesity and diabetes in our country. Most of
all, it’s because of our addiction to corn. That’s the
stomach-turning message of “King Corn,” a polished
documentary making the rounds of theaters nationwide and raising
the eyebrows of many Americans.

The movie traces the
journey of Yale college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who head
to the nation’s heartland to find out where their food comes
from. The two purchase one acre of farmland near Greene, Iowa,
plant it to corn, harvest it, and then begin a journey of discovery
that blows them away. Cheney and Ellis follow their corn to a
mega-feedlot in Colorado, where it fattens cattle quickly. But that
is just the tip of the silo.

The corn winds up not only
in our beef, the two find out, but also in the majority of other
foods we consume in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. The syrup
is a sweetener found in darn near everything we consume, including
applesauce, salad dressing, cookies, chocolate milk, ketchup,
granola bars, steak sauce, stewed tomatoes and chewing gum. You
name it, it’s probably got corn.

Corn-fed cattle --
and remember, cows were not made to eat corn, but evolved as
grazers of grasses -- and high-fructose corn syrup are the biggest
culprits in America’s slide into obesity. In 1971, 47.7
percent of Americans were categorized as overweight or obese. By
2004, that percentage had ballooned to 66 percent.

“Hamburger meat is rather fat disguised as meat,” says
Loren Cordain, University of Colorado agricultural economist, in
“King Corn.” The corn lobby makes the claim that our
obesity is the result of choices made by consumers, and it says
that corn is the best thing since automobiles and television. The
movie, Rob Robertson of the Nebraska Farm Bureau told me,
“exaggerates corn and the problems it causes and overlooks
all the benefits corn has for our country and our society.”

But it has become increasingly difficult to shrug off the
disturbing parallels between our growing portliness and
deteriorating health, and the foods that have permeated our diets.
“Even our French fries -- half the calories in the French
fries come from the fat they’re cooked in, which is liable to
be corn oil or soy oil,” says Michael Pollan, author of The
Omnivore’s Dilemma.

“King Corn” finds
two other flaws in America’s making of food: The
industrialization of agriculture, which has fueled intensive use of
farm chemicals and caused pollution to our streams and rivers, and
our system of deeply ingrained subsidies. The subsidies granted by
Congress reward the over-production of commodity grains and ignore
the value of nutritious foods such as vegetables, fruits and lean
meats, such as grass-fed beef. In 2005, nearly $10 billion in
federal subsidies encouraged farmers to grow a surplus of corn. But
only a small fraction of that money went for subsidizing nutritious
foods. The recent high prices for corn have also transferred
subsidies from corn growers to corn-ethanol producers.

Because we grow corn in ever-increasing amounts in America, the
corn lobby -- with the exuberant help of university researchers,
Monsanto and the like -- has spent big money over the decades to
find alternative uses for the grain. Presto! That spurred the
development of high-fructose corn syrup, and, as the two student
farmers come to realize, cheap food made more palatable with corn
syrup is not necessarily healthy food. It’s refreshing to see
“King Corn” stimulating a needed debate about our
nation’s farm policy, and it’s perhaps predictable that
the corn lobby deems any criticism of its crop and its role in our
food system to be anti-farmer and anti-American.

On the
contrary, investigation and debate are what make America a truly
democratic country. We love to talk, we love to eat, and a lot of
us have become really curious about what’s in that corn dog.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes and
reports in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you'd like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at [email protected].